Priority Seating

Today I was having lunch with G6 we were discussing the New York City subway and some of the bizarre scenes I have witnessed therein. I told him the horrible story of the morning I watched a man slap a woman across the face on the 6 Train. To restore my faith in straphangers, I had a nice interaction on the subway tonight.

I was traveling home from work carrying a box from drugstore.com. The box was probably a "medium" size, but I'm pretty small so it was large enough to be cumbersome for me. I got on the Q Train and had to stand as usual. It's difficult to get a seat on a Brooklyn bound Q Train during rush hour. So I was standing and holding my box, quietly shouldering my burden. I mean I wasn't sighing and shifting the box around and making a big freaking production of it. I hate subway overreactors. Like when the conductor makes the announcement "We are being held here momentarily by a red signal. We should be moving again shortly," and some prick gets all huffy, looking at his watch, harumping, etc... look pal, that doesn't make the train go any faster.

Anyway, I'm standing there with my box and after a few stops I see that some young guy is trying to make eye contact with me, so I look at him and he says, "Would you like to sit down?"

"Oh. No thank you," I said because I only had two more stops to go.

He pulled his headphones down. "You don't want to sit down?"

"Okay, thanks," I said taking the seat because hell, the box was kind of heavy. Now, guys have given up seats for me before; I'm praying that it is not because I look particularly infirm or, you know, pregnant. Instead, with this guy, I choose to believe that he had recently had to ride the damn train with a big bulky box and remembered what a bullshit hassle it is and so out of empathy and human kindess offered me his seat. And I appreciate it and thought, maybe there is hope for this species.

What was in the box? Oh, about 900 tampons. Why do you ask?